Web hosting is one of the primary requirements for any blog to start with its success journey. The webhosts help you in hosting your website and make it available for the entire world. Hence the hosting remains a crucial factor while making your presence on the Internet. And one must spend some time and do some research while purchasing a webhost for themselves.
Following are some of the important aspects one must consider while selecting a web hosting server for their website:
#1 Storage: Storage is one of the foremost and most important factors to consider while selecting your webhosting service provider. You must have found numerous hosting providers with unlimited disk space packages. However, no service provider till date is blessed enough to give you unlimited space and often these restrictions are documented under Terms & Conditions. Usually several gigabytes are enough to store data of a normal website. Hence, you must either check on the limits or go with the ones that clearly specify the storage limits.
#2 Bandwidth: Similar to that of storage, the providers these days also offer unlimited bandwidth to their customers. However, there is always a limit to it and you must ensure that before falling fool for these lucrative offers. Bandwidth becomes a major concern when you are running a popular website with large number of daily visitors or a website that holds high definition videos or images. Such websites often require good bandwidth.
#3 Hosting Capacity: No Internet marketer or blogger will stop his or her online journey with a single blog. And hence, you may land up with more than one website. Now, it becomes much tedious to manage individual hosting account for each of your websites. And hence come the option of multiple domain hosting servers. Host Unlimited Domains! Again a prank on the newbie Internet marketers and bloggers. There is always a limit on how many domains you can host on your server and one must definitely check it with their providers before selecting their hosting plan.
#4 Features: Your hosting package comes with some amazing features like email accounts, cpanel access, POP, IMAP, webmail interface, etc. Look for these features and ensure you get the maximum.
#5 Database Support: You never know when your website will require a database. And hence it’s essential to have a hosting with database support to avoid any future complications. Now-a-days, almost all service providers offer you database support along with the hosting plan. However, you must check on the databases they offer. Though MySQL is one of the widely used databases we would ask you to prefer PostsgreSQL, SQL Server, or Oracle if you have the option to choose from.
#6 Framework Support: Different frameworks today have made website development a cake walk. So ensure that your hosting server supports all the leading frameworks. Nowadays, WordPress is one of the most widely used content management systems that help a lot of non-technical people to launch their business online. Hence, ensure that your provider offers you this support.
HostGator is one of the web hosting service providers that offer you almost all the leading CMS support along with an exclusive one-click install of your choice of CMS. Moreover, the provider also offers you great discounts that make these plans all the more cheaper. Search for working hostgator coupon code on the Internet and you will find a large number of them.
#7 Customer Support: Customer support is one of the most essential factors to make a business successful. And the same applies while choosing a hosting server. Look out for only those providers that offer you 24/7/365 days of excellent customer support over phone, chat or email. This will help you solve any of your website or hosting problems within minutes.
#8 Command Line Access: If you are a big organization with your own technical staff, you will require much more control over your server with the command line access. This helps you in changing file permissions, securely copying files and other critical tasks. If you are a novice, you will definitely not need this feature but if you are a professional, you definitely know what’s it capable of.
#9 Website Builder: Almost all service providers these days offer you with website builder tools. This tools are some beneficial that they help you in designing and developing your website within minutes by just drag and drop methods. Though most providers charge for this service, you can also find it free with many providers.
#10 .htaccess Files: Access to this file helps you in password protecting your directories, redirect pages, rewrite URLs and much more.
#11 Language Support: Here language as in programming languages. Ensure that your server supports almost all the programming languages like Ruby on Rails, Python, etc.
#12 Adword Credits: Most hosting providers offer you free Google adword credits which can be used for some or the other form of advertising over the Internet.
#13 Site Backup: Do not trust your hosting servers as they are at an equal risk of crashing as that of your personal hard drives. So, it’s always beneficial to take your site backups quite often. Hence, one must ensure that their hosting provider offer an easy to use backup option.
#14 Operating System: Your hosting provider must offer you the choice of selecting your own operating system. The necessity of OS changes with the type of language you are going to use to design your website. Hence, if you are using ASP .NET, you will require a Microsoft Hosting Server and on the other hand if you are using any open source language you can use Linux Hosting Server.
#15 Extra Applications: This may include various applications like forums, mailing lists, bulletin boards, etc. These applications usually are a lot beneficial when you’re working on some large project or an ecommerce website.
#16 Updates: Your service provider must ensure that the hosting servers are periodically updated and work with the latest technology.
#17 Uptime: Uptime is another crucial factors essential for the overall functioning of your website. These days almost all hosting providers offer you an uptime of 99.99% which is not always that specific. However, anything above 99.5% can be considered ok when it comes to your hosting uptime.
#18 Free Domain: Don’t miss the cherry over the cake. Most hosting service providers offer you a free domain name along with the hosting plan. So, do not make the mistake of buying a domain name before actually purchasing your hosting.
#19 Money Back Guarantee: Always choose only those service providers that offer you 100% money back guarantee for a specific period. This will help you avoid any losses if you are trusting on a new hosting service provider.
#20 Easy Control Panel: Easy to use control panel is another important factor to consider while choosing your hosting provider. If you are a newbie, you won’t like any backend stuff on your dashboard to mess up with. Hence, ensure that you get an easy to use control panel.
Hope the above #20 important features to look while buying a webhost help you in choosing an appropriate hosting service provider for website.
If you think there are any other crucial factors one must consider while buying a hosting provider, please do mention them in the comments below.
